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comment by wasoxygen
wasoxygen  ·  3237 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Memes backed by “studies”

That was a good one. "Everyone knows" this, and so did I. The Economist has a cleaner chart, and it is striking how well the logarithmic relationship holds.

I tried the suggested image search, and think I found the chart the author made fun of, "the one where people who make enough money literally hit the top of the scale. Apparently, there’s a dollar value which not only makes you happy, it makes you as happy as it is possible for humans to be."





b_b  ·  3237 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think the more interesting here is the intercountry comparison. For example, the richest group in Japan is slightly less satisfied than America's poor. I wonder if that is reflective of the Japanese being unhappy, Americans being happy, or an incommensurate comparison whereby we understand satisfaction to mean different things.

Also, for the mathematically ignorant, a lin-log plot showing a linearity implies a logarithmic relationship, which means that there is a diminishing return on happiness with new money. So it appears the the trope that a little money makes a poor person a lot happier than a lot of money makes a rich person does, in fact, appear to hold across all the countries surveyed, even if there isn't a hard cap beyond which one doesn't get happier with more money.

mk  ·  3237 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Perhaps we should switch the saying, "I couldn't me happier!" to "I make more than $60k per year!".